Learning with an Emotional Brain

Mary Helen Immordino-Yang is a social-affective neuroscientist and human development psychologist who studies social emotion and self-awareness across cultures, connections to resilience and morality, and implications for education. She is associate professor of education, psychology and neuroscience at the University of Southern California. A former public junior high school science teacher, she earned her BA at Cornell University, her doctorate at Harvard University, and completed her postdoctoral training with Antonio Damasio. She holds National Science Foundation CAREER award and is serving on the National Academy of Sciences committee to write How People Learn II. Since 2012, she has been named among the most influential scholars in education by Education Week’s RHSU Edu-Scholar Public Presence Rankings. She has received numerous national awards for her research and for engaging the public with science, including the PNAS Cozzarelli Prize, an honor coin from the U.S. Army, a commendation from the County of Los Angeles, the AAAS Early Career Award for Public Engagement with Science, and early career achievement awards from the APS, AERA, and FABBS. She is the inaugural recipient of the International Mind, Brain and Education Society award for Transforming ​Education through Neuroscience, and in 2015 was elected IMBES president by the society’s membership.